Details Emerge on Alex Proyas's "Knowing"

While we're eagerly awaiting the Directors Cut DVD of Dark City, we also have Alex Proyas's next project, Knowing, to look forward to. It was announced a while back with Nicolas Cage as the lead, along with a short plot description. Now we have a full plot synopsis, and it definitely looks like something up Proyas's alley:

In 1958, as part of the dedication ceremony for a new elementary school, a group of students is asked to draw pictures to be stored in a time capsule. But one of the students, a mysterious girl who seems to hear whispered voices, fills her sheet of paper with rows of apparently random numbers instead.

Fast forward 50 years to the present: A new generation of students examines the contents of the time capsule and the girl’s cryptic message ends up in the hands of young CALEB MYLES. But it is Caleb’s father, professor TED MYLES (Nicolas Cage), who makes the startling discovery that the encoded message predicts with pinpoint accuracy the dates, death tolls and coordinates of every major disaster of the past 50 years. As Ted further unravels the document’s secrets, he realizes it foretells three additional events—the last of which hints at destruction on a global scale and seems to somehow involve Ted and his son. When Ted’s attempts to alert the authorities fall on deaf ears, he takes it upon himself to try to prevent more destruction from taking place.

This gripping supernatural thriller charts one man’s faltering steps towards belief in the ultimate order of the universe even as he finds himself surrounded by mounting chaos. With the reluctant help of DIANA WHELAN (Rose Byrne) and ABBY, the daughter and granddaughter of the now-deceased author of the cryptic prophecies, Ted’s increasingly desperate efforts take him on a heart-pounding race against time until he finds himself facing the ultimate disaster—and the ultimate sacrifice.

Even though Proyas's I, Robot was not all that well received, I found it an enjoyable sci-fi romp whose only crime was its title. If it was called something else, and didn't attempt to be a reinterpretation of Asimov's work, I'm certain the film would have received a bit more deserved credit.

In general, I give Proyas the benefit of the doubt, especially after The Crow, and the aforementioned Dark City. My only worry about this project is of course Nicolas Cage--who hasn't really had much success lately. The fact that this film's plot vaguely resembles Cage's nightmarishly bad Next doesn't give me much more confidence in him either.

Knowing is scheduled for a 2008 release, but details beyond that are unknown.

[Source: Quiet Earth via Twitch]